Photoshop, GIMP, and Photo Editing at Home

Steven Klein

If you are interested in doing more advanced photo editing at home or after the end of semester, there are a number of great options open to you:

Photoshop is now on available as a subscription-based photo bundle for $10 per month here.
There is a 30-day free trial, so if you are considering this route, be sure to do the trial first.

There is also an extremely simplified version of Photoshop with just the most basic tools called Photoshop Elements. It generally comes bundled with the software that comes with Wacom Tablets or some printers and scanners.

Another great alternative to Photoshop that many photographers prefer is Lightroom. It is made by the same company as Photoshop, but is designed for photographers who may not need all of the advanced retouching and compositing functions available in photoshop. It's also a lot less expensive.
The student-priced version can be found here.

Apple makes a photo-editing program called Aperture, found here. It is very similar to Lightroom and is priced about the same.

If you aren't interested in buying software, a popular option is GIMP, which is available for free download here: http://www.gimp.org. There are free tutorials here: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/

There are a lot of Photoshop and basic photo editing tutorials online. By far, the best are found on Lynda.com. It's a pay-membership site, but they've made quite a bit of their content available for free on their Youtube channel, found here.

This should get you started! If you have any suggestions or recommendations, please leave a comment.